ZocDoc Gets $3 Million First Round For Doctor Booking Service

ZocDoc, a startup that bills itself as “OpenTable for healthcare”, has raised a $3 million first round led by Khosla Ventures. The NYC-based company allows patients to book appointments online and search practitioners by type and by which insurance they accept. The company started off just doing dental appointments in the NYC area, but has since expanded towards other areas, like primary care and dermatology. CEO Cyrus Massoumi says the company has 30,000 users, growing at 50 percent each month and that for the most part all growth has come through word of mouth. It also has a waiting list of doctors that would like to take patients through the service. While the service is free for patients, doctors pay to be included, as the site can help them streamline appointment booking and market themselves to new patients.

Massoumi says he isn’t worried that the large healthcare portals, like WebMD (NSDQ: WBMD), will get into the game. WebMD, specifically, he notes, keeps moving away from transactional services. And he predicts that any nationwide effort would fail, since healthcare is a local market. Overall on the state of healthcare he says: “So many pieces are broken.” The point: one company can only expect to tackle a small part of the problem. That also means ZocDoc isn’t rushing into new ventures like online medical records: “There have been companies that have approached us about getting involved in some of the large online medical records initiatives.” But eventually, this is an area that would make sense.

ZocDoc has 10 employees and will use the money to expand its business in areas like customer service, marketing and geographically, into areas outside of New York.